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The Hilarious World of Depression

A show about clinical depression... with laughs? Well, yeah. Depression is an incredibly common and isolating disease experienced by millions, yet often stigmatized by society. The Hilarious World of Depression is a series of frank, moving, and, yes, funny conversations with top comedians who have dealt with this disease, hosted by veteran humorist and public radio host John Moe. Join guests such as Maria Bamford, Paul F. Tompkins, Andy Richter, and Jen Kirkman to learn how they’ve dealt with depression and managed to laugh along the way. If you have not met the disease personally, it’s almost certain that someone you know has, whether it’s a friend, family member, colleague, or neighbor. Depression is a vicious cycle of solitude and stigma that leaves people miserable and sometimes dead. Frankly, we’re not going to put up with that anymore. The Hilarious World of Depression is not medical treatment and should not be seen as a substitute for therapy or medication. But it is a chance to gain some insight, have a few laughs, and realize that people with depression are not alone and that together, we can all feel a bit better. The Hilarious World of Depression is made possible by a grant from HealthPartners’ and its Make It Okay campaign which works to reduce the stigma of mental health. www.makeitok.org

A show about clinical depression... with laughs? Well, yeah. Depression is an incredibly common and isolating disease experienced by millions, yet often stigmatized by society. The Hilarious World of Depression is a series of frank, moving, and, yes, funny conversations with top comedians who have dealt with this disease, hosted by veteran humorist and public radio host John Moe. Join guests such as Maria Bamford, Paul F. Tompkins, Andy Richter, and Jen Kirkman to learn how they’ve dealt with depression and managed to laugh along the way. If you have not met the disease personally, it’s almost certain that someone you know has, whether it’s a friend, family member, colleague, or neighbor. Depression is a vicious cycle of solitude and stigma that leaves people miserable and sometimes dead. Frankly, we’re not going to put up with that anymore. The Hilarious World of Depression is not medical treatment and should not be seen as a substitute for therapy or medication. But it is a chance to gain some insight, have a few laughs, and realize that people with depression are not alone and that together, we can all feel a bit better. The Hilarious World of Depression is made possible by a grant from HealthPartners’ and its Make It Okay campaign which works to reduce the stigma of mental health. www.makeitok.org

A show about clinical depression... with laughs? Well, yeah. Depression is an incredibly common and isolating disease experienced by millions, yet often stigmatized by society. The Hilarious World of Depression is a series of frank, moving, and, yes, funny conversations with top comedians who have dealt with this disease, hosted by veteran humorist and public radio host John Moe. Join guests such as Maria Bamford, Paul F. Tompkins, Andy Richter, and Jen Kirkman to learn how they’ve dealt with depression and managed to laugh along the way. If you have not met the disease personally, it’s almost certain that someone you know has, whether it’s a friend, family member, colleague, or neighbor. Depression is a vicious cycle of solitude and stigma that leaves people miserable and sometimes dead. Frankly, we’re not going to put up with that anymore. The Hilarious World of Depression is not medical treatment and should not be seen as a substitute for therapy or medication. But it is a chance to gain some insight, have a few laughs, and realize that people with depression are not alone and that together, we can all feel a bit better. The Hilarious World of Depression is made possible by a grant from HealthPartners’ and its Make It Okay campaign which works to reduce the stigma of mental health. www.makeitok.org

Language:

English

Episodes

Although she comes across as confident and happy on her incredibly successful YouTube channel, Hannah Hart has plenty of experience with insecurity and misery in her life. Growing up, she faced severe poverty, hunger, and dealing with a mother who was mentally ill. Still, she made it into a good college where she had to confront issues about her religion and her sexuality on her way to getting two degrees and not being able to be proud of any of it because of depression. Today, she's a...

It's hard to settle on a musical description for Ted Leo. We ended up going with "if The Beach Boys were '80s skateboarders" to summarize his melodic intense post-punk sound. Similarly hard to nail down is whether Ted's longtime issues with depression and anger stem from his brain's built-in wiring or from abuse he suffered as a kid and barely ever talked about since.

Rachel Bloom has never moved across the country to chase a boy like Rebecca Bunch did. Rebecca is the character Rachel plays in "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," the hit show she co-created and stars in on The CW Network. But Rachel does have a long history of messed up romantic relationships -- plus depression and intrusive looping thoughts. And her career really took off when she got inspired by another Rebecca: Rebecca Black. You, know. That 2011 song "Friday?" Yep.

In one of the last interviews he gave, Reggie Osse, aka Combat Jack, talks about the connection between the status of the African-American man in contemporary society, the changing role of masculinity in hip-hop culture, and mental health. Osse was an important figure in hip-hop as a lawyer, editor, podcast host, and thinker. This interview was conducted in October of 2017, and Osse died on December 20th of that year.

Before she was the host of NPR's popular Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, Linda Holmes was an attorney working at the Minnesota Legislature. Before that, she was a student living in squalor. And before that, she was the victim of some seriously messed up mean kid behavior. We hear about her unusual path to a better life, the older and very recent struggles she has had, and how the written word proved redemptive. We also hear about how Linda's weight was seen as a symptom of her depression...

If you've ever heard this show before, you've heard singer-songwriter Rhett Miller. He wrote and performs the theme song about "the world's greatest clown." On this episode, Rhett tells of his teenage suicide attempt, a mysterious illness, his musical salvation, and his grandmother's owl fixation. He even brought his guitar along and performs a few songs.

New York comedian Mike Brown is a big fan of objective cause-and-effect scenarios. This drew him into playing video games, studying math and engineering, and ultimately getting on stage to tell jokes and get laughs. The thing is, sometimes you have to face events that are completely senseless.

New York comic Janelle James never even imagined being a comedian. She had grown up in the Virgin Islands, worked in fashion PR, had two kids, and was living in Illinois when she first walked on stage at an open mic night. She was 30 years old. But as soon as she hit the stage, she knew this was her calling and many years later she's headlining clubs all over the country and is a comedy star on the rise. She talks about trying to outrun her depression, dealing with depression-induced...

She's the author of bestselling books and an incredibly popular blog, but Jenny Lawson showed up to our interview wondering, at least a little, if her appearance on this show and her whole career, really, was part of some delusion. It's not. She's the real thing: an incredibly funny and honest writer with a legion of fans, a very old decapitated and stuffed boar's head named James Garfield, anxiety, depression, and a clear-eyed view of the world.

We've gathered up a whole lot of tips, tricks, ideas, and stories to help you get through this time of year when merriness and jolliness aren't always in abundant supply. Hear holiday thoughts from Wil Wheaton, Margaret Cho, Jenny Lawson, John Green, Aimee Mann, and more. Plus, a story about a slobbering zebra.

You know those things that happened but that you don't talk about very much? Or even at all? Because they're too upsetting? In this episode, host John Moe and guest Ana Marie Cox put those things on the table. Ana is a journalist, pundit, and podcaster; she talks about the lowest point in her mental health, a horrible decision, and what came next. John talks about the event that led to this podcast being created in the first place. This is a re-broadcast of an episode from last spring that...

Growing up, actor and writer Julie Klausner was too busy battling depression and daydreaming about an imagined Merlot-sipping cosmopolitan adulthood to really engage in the world itself. It wasn't until she entered the world of comedy and improv as an adult that things really started to click into place. That led to creating Difficult People, a show on Hulu, where she plays a much bolder, brassier, and more oblivious version of herself.

Long before Jeff Tweedy was the founder and leader of the enormously popular band Wilco, he was a kid in Illinois with severe migraines and a tendency toward anxiety and depression. He cycled through alcohol, marijuana, and, finally, opioids to try to get to the point of feeling normal and okay, even relying on a fan who worked at Walgreen's to score him the pills he wanted. Finally, a stint in rehab and a return of self-confidence got him back on track. There's a really sad and darkly...

With one recent appearance on The Tonight Show, Patti Harrison went from being a well-regarded alternative comedian in New York to being a de facto spokesperson for transgendered people. She's proud of who she is and proud to give a voice to that community. But she wants to make it clear that her sense of humor is much darker, odder, and occasionally more disgusting than one might expect from someone at the forefront of a social cause. Hear about her journey to figure out who she is and...

Although Gary Gulman has been a successful stand-up comedian for decades - with acclaimed specials, a loyal fan base, and appearances on all major late night shows - this was not his original plan. Gary is 6'6" and athletically gifted, he loved basketball, and had a full ride athletic scholarship to a Division 1 program. Problem is, he had no killer instinct. He had more of a comedian instinct. Hear Gary's journey through a lifetime of deep depression, impossible standards, and some of the...

Singer/songwriter Aimee Mann has a reputation for making music that is raw, emotional, and sometimes not all that cheerful. In real life, she's perfectly cheerful - thank you very much - and has traveled a long road of depression, anxiety, a difficult childhood, and writer's block. Through it all, she's taken a calm, considered, and creative approach to problem-solving that has served her well. Oh, and one time as a teenager she wrote a terrible song about hobos.

Author John Green had one of the best-selling books of the last 10 years with The Fault In Our Stars. The problem is, when you write an acclaimed smash hit, everyone wants you to somehow do it again. In attempting to write that follow-up, Green went off the meds he'd been taking for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, hoping it would bring him to a more vivid and imaginative place. Instead, the crash made him unable to write at all. Hear how Green later used those dark days to craft the...

If you've enjoyed any comedy in the last 20 years, there's a good chance Neal Brennan helped make it. He's a veteran comic, writer, director, and co-creator, with Dave Chappelle, of the acclaimed Chappelle's Show. Over the past 20-plus years, he's also tried everything he could think of to tame his depression. Hear Neal's epic journey to feeling pretty good.

She's one of the most influential and innovative comedians of the last few decades, but before all that, Margaret Cho was a Korean-American girl growing up in the 1970s in San Francisco. We hear about the sometimes very darkly humorous ways her family and culture dealt with depression and suicide, and how she harnessed her own depression to begin her comedy. Along the way, the keys to Margaret's often-shocking comedic style emerge and lead to making people upset in New Jersey.

Wil Wheaton was a child star in Stand By Me, a regular on Star Trek: The Next Generation as a teenager, and has been trying to figure out his role in show business for a long time since then. He was dealing with the pressures of fame and the fickle tastes of Hollywood, all while dealing with a chemical imbalance in his brain that made him prone to anxiety and depression. Wil's better now thanks to medication, but despite his long IMDb page and regular work on The Big Bang Theory, his hit...

Duration:00:49:06

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